Kobe Bryant puts up a shot over Houston's Chase Budinger in the Lakers' victory Tuesday night. ROSE PALMISANO, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

It's fitting that Mike Brown hung up that Jacob Riis quote in a frame on the wall space of the Lakers' locker room right next to where Kobe Bryant gears up and winds down every game.

It's there that you'll always find the special calf stretch block for added protection against resultant injuries to the ankles and knees. Then there is the oversized training basketball Bryant uses to prepare better for handling the regulation ball. After each game there'll be the tub of ice water for Bryant's ankles and monster ice packs bound over both knees with a timer for military precision on how long everything must stay chilled.

These days, over Bryant's right wrist also rests a fat postgame ice wrap roughly the size of rookie guard Andrew Goudelock, Bryant trying in vain to minimize swelling after acting on the court as if there isn't a torn ligament in there.

Bryant has been taking a numbing injection to that wrist before every game in hopes of performing normally. Yes, it's that bad.

He does not want to publicize all the details of his wrist, which is usable only because the bones were not moved permanently out of alignment without the ligament to hold them in place. But it's now clear just how problematic the wrist is, and it's fair to wonder where all this will take Bryant.

Bryant walked out of Staples Center on Tuesday night with something that looked like an oven mitten over his right hand and wrist. He wears an immobilizing brace over the wrist when off the court, meaning take-for-granted parts of life such as texting on his phone or zipping his fly become rather challenging.

It was much the same aggravation in 2009-10, when Bryant played through the avulsion fracture in his right index finger – another rather useful body part for everyday activities apart from handling a basketball, too.

He figured that out well enough, with some terribly off nights mixed in with mostly great ones. That is Bryant's usual standard, so that's the goal, which is why it was so meaningful for Bryant to come through great after being so terrible in Denver.

He has to prove that he can do it most nights this season. He couldn't quite last season on an unsteady knee, and along with Pau Gasol, the new Andrew Bynum can win games now that Bynum never could've two years ago.

In 2009-10 Bryant paid a price for overextending himself, with the fracture in the top knuckle of that finger eventually healing, but the main middle knuckle so beaten down by the abuse that it wound up with arthritis.

That finger today remains, well, quite deformed. Actually, the most accurate way to describe the finger? Lumpy.

Yuck. It looks a lot like the hands of the stonecutter Riis wrote about must look. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich first immortalized the stonecutter in his locker room with a credo that former assistant Brown loved so much he brought it with him to Cleveland and has posted it now for the Lakers.

"When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."

The words neatly sum up the sort of drive that coaches long for from their players. Jon Gruden ran with the credo in 2002, and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl. This season, new Toronto Raptors coach Dwane Casey went so far as to put an actual boulder just inside his locker-room door as his team tries to build.

For the Lakers, it is the basis on which Bryant, who carries a deep reverence for Popovich, has built his bond with Brown. Days before Brown and Bryant reviewed video side-by-side on the flight home from Denver after Bryant's brutal 6-for-28 game Sunday night, Bryant shared with me the depth of his respect for Brown.

"I really want to win for him in the worst way, because I see how much he works and I see how much he wants it," Bryant said. "I hear the criticism he takes, and I believe it to be unwarranted. It makes me want to work even harder than I already am."

Brown and Bryant came out of their video study together with a mandate: Rededicate themselves to getting Bryant the ball in his favorite spots right off the free-throw line or in the short post.

Brown also mentioned to Bryant the need to follow through properly with his wrist on jump shots. Well, when Bryant does that, the wrist howls in pain. It wasn't fatigue from six games in eight days that left so many of Bryant's shots in Denver on the front rim as much as the wrist failing.

Against Houston on Tuesday night, Bryant made his first three shots, then missed eight of the next nine. Again, he was not deterred. This time, it paid off for the Lakers, who won with Bryant scoring 37 points on 14-of-29 shooting.

He did not take any practice shots at halftime and had to leave the court for the first three minutes of the fourth quarter for more medical maintenance. But Rockets coach Kevin McHale acknowledged that Brown's tactics in isolating Bryant in his spots worked – pre-empting Houston's double-teams from reaching him. Despite the wrist, Bryant took care of the rest.

"We tried to get him to come through some more traffic, but they loaded up the weak side," McHale said. "All four guys are standing over there, and we're trying to get our guys to come over and be more aggressive."

Said Brown: "We put him right in his comfort-zone area, and he was able to step up and produce big for us."

At a time when statistics are rather sketchy because it's so early in a season with so many back-to-back sets, the way teams play is in some regard more revealing than how they've played.

How have the Lakers played? Only two NBA players have more than 50 isolation possessions this season, according to Synergy Sports: the 23-year-old Kevin Durant and 33-year-old Bryant.

That is the depth of Brown's respect for Bryant, about whom Brown said unequivocally Tuesday: "I'm going to give him some freedom."

Brown said Bryant has earned that trust through what he has done in the past. Trust in himself is the reason Bryant is so defiant in shooting, no matter the percentage so far and no matter the state of the ligament.

And trust is why, same as with the stonecutting, Bryant won't surrender to the injury: He keeps going and going, adjusting and adjusting, shooting and shooting ... believing there will be a breakthrough that sustains him and his team, now and later.

The Black Mamba is also the Black Chameleon. He's constantly evolving, changing and adapting – the only difference being that he lives to stand out.

If you didn't think Bryant would listen to Brown, you're crazy. Kobe can be stubborn, but ultimately he'll listen to anyone who can really help him.

As a great example, there to help him Tuesday night was Tim Grover. As annoyed as he gets by the idea that he patterns his life after Michael Jordan's, Bryant went ahead and strapped those old Air Jordans on his feet to follow right in Michael's footsteps so he could have the trainer he believes gives him the best chance to succeed as he ages.

Bryant is always the same but is never the same. Whether he's missing 22 shots or making 14, he's analyzing every one. He will travel to the ends of the earth for any possible edge, yet his nose will never leave the grindstone.

What he doesn't understand is why everyone doesn't get it by now:

This is what he does. This is who he is.

Bryant pounded away with that busted finger for six months of the 2009-10 season.

He got up only after he had what he calls the most satisfying of his five NBA championships.

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